Rain, Wind, and Power

This was the 193nd market at Pigeon Park on Sunday. The weather started off great. A little cold, but no rain, and the rain began slowly around noon. Later in the day, the rain started to really come down and chased away most of the vendors and shoppers.

We had a great gift this weekend with the addition of power.

Thank you again, City of Vancouver!

Our revenue was not stellar for the day, only $215, which represents only 65% of our best single day total. Adjusting, however, for the fact that we had torrential rain in the later half of the day shows how well we can survive inclement whether now that we have many 10×10 canopy tents for our vendors.
Sandi Swanigan from the City of Vancouver Events department came down and opened up the power box for us. There was much rejoicing. Even though we did not advertise it at all, we had many vendors ask to test their chargers, laptops, and monitors throughout the day.

We had two porta potties again this weekend, and they were much used. The report from Jacek (who tries to lock them on Friday morning when they are dropped off) is that there was a line immediately for both bathrooms the moment they were dropped off. This shows anecdotally how high the demand is for bathrooms in the Downtown Eastside.

We had a few encounters with the VPD today. A vendor was taken away in the morning, but no one recognized him, so there was little interest on the part of the volunteers. Also, in the afternoon, a vendor – Ali – had some items confiscated. There is some debate about whether he lives in the DTES, and we probably need to research this.

A good story for the day involve a new RPIC – Chris H – and a female vendor that was shivering in the rain. Chris noticed that she was standing in the rain and walked over to another vendor who had a number of coats for sale. Horatio immediately offered her one of his coats for free. This is the kind of thing that we can all do for each other in the DTES.